Community Meeting update

A very quick update here.

We’ve just had another Community Group Meeting. A pretty good turn out by our standards and some new faces which was good.

It’s always good to hear that you’re not the only one with a particular gripe, fly tipping rates highly for everyone and the need to get the bin yards cleared, which is reassuring.

I was personally very pleased to hear that there are plans to bring some of the houses back into use. I think Leeds Federated Housing are looking into this I had a note to raise this as an issue, but had absolutely no idea how it would be put into practice so I’m delighted that someone better  qualified than me has already thought about it – good news for the Empty Homes agenda too.

There are plans for future demolitions which is a relief and even though things are not good for residents I felt like we were listened to and hopefully action will be taken. It’s gonna take time, but at least there’s progress.

Also looking into planting wildflowers on the cleared ground, but we’ll need to find funding to do this. And onto the next big news, to be able to apply for funding we need to become a formal group and that means setting up bank accounts and getting a resident Chairperson – which is me!! Gulp.

Hope I can do a good job.

Anyway more offensively swear ladened rants to follow

See ya

A spoonful of sugar.

Wayne & Waynetta

Hot of the press, there’s another community meeting next week. It’s an opportunity to unload to the Local Authority and find out how much money we don’t have to finish demolishing and developing our street, though to give them their due they are acknowledging the lack of progress and asking for our input, but it will remain to be seen if they are willing to take us up on any of them. But I’d better pace myself, it can’t all be forward thinking and positive. So after the delights of Ricky and Bianca in my last post, today I give you Wayne and Waynetta.

This charming couple lived in the flat under Ricky and Bianca with their unfortunate offspring, or rather Waynetta did. Wayne would visit his lovely lady-friend and their ill-fated spawn wearing his school uniform on the nights he didn’t have detention, and if this doesn’t give you enough of an insight into the general tone of what’s to come just read the next sentence. I often saw Wayne gobbing copious amounts of phlegm onto the pavement as he slouched his way towards Waynetta’s with his angry little fists shoved into his easy care trouser pockets his acne pitted brow furrowed in deep thought – or he could just have looked like that generally.

W & W were the couple most responsible for the never-ending and mind melting playing of Billy Ray Cyrus at all hours of the day and night, the sound turned up so loud it distorted and hurt your ears and for that alone I can never forgive them.

It was pretty shit living next door to them to be honest. Ricky & Bianca were bad enough but their disturbances were sporadic and at least they looked shamefaced when you saw them afterwards, but not our little white trash neighbours. These enchanting little scumbags contributed little to the local community, the economy or most distressingly for their progeny, the gene pool.

I became very familiar with the Peabody Trust who managed the flat next door. Waynetta was the main focus of the noise diaries that I kept. When she wasn’t screaming at her sweet toddling baby (and he was a sweetheart), smashing things in her flat, screaming at Wayne, standing in the street and yes you guessed it screaming, she was playing loud music and staggering about like an inebriated fishwife at all hours of the day and night.

I hope you can understand why I have zero tolerance for noisy neighbours, I really do feel I’ve had my fair share. It’s coming up to ten years since I left London so some of my memories of Waynetta are a little fuzzy but I do remember that it was pretty grim.

If I remember correctly my housemate S and I decided to contact Social Services about the obvious neglect that the little boy was subjected to on a regular basis. The final straw came when we found him wondering the street by himself at about 11 p.m. He can’t have been anymore than two years old. Waynetta was unconscious inside her pit and hadn’t bothered to lock the front door, or even shut it.

I recall that my flatmate was very disappointed at the reaction she got when she called for the Local Authority for advice, something along the lines of us being judgemental busybodies.  I mean what parent hasn’t got smashed off their tits on Benylin and Thunderbirds/MD 20/20 and abdicated all responsibility for her offspring leaving them unsupervised in the middle of the road at midnight?!

My biggest memory of Waynetta was one hot summer’s evening. She stood outside her house near to Midnight with her posse drinking Red Stripe lager and smoking fags and yes you guessed it shrieking with her mates. We were in the living room with the window open to let a welcome breeze into the house.

We were debating whether or not to move to the kitchen to avoid the intrusive drivel from outside. Waynetta’s little boy was staggering around her and we could hear him chattering and pleading away, “Mummy tired. Mummy bed” repeating it over and over, as toddlers are want to do and trying to get the attention of a ‘responsible’ adult. He could barely stand and just wanted to go to sleep.  Unfortunately for him the focus of his pleading couldn’t have cared less.

Her response was one of the most gobsmacking things I think I have ever heard a mother say to her child without a single hint of irony.

With a half baked expression on her face, a half smoked fag in one hand and a can of lager in the other she slurred her angry response to the little fellah’s cry for attention.

“F***ing shut-up Ryan. I can’t be Mary Poppins all the f***ing time!”

Let’s be honest Waynetta, just once would’ve been nice.

Rickaaaayyyyy!

So it looks like I’m focussing on noise for the next few posts; mainly because it’s too depressing to post about how Leeds City Council still hasn’t managed to clear all of the rubbish from their neglected bin yards yet. I mean it’s not like they have any influence over the refuse collection department is it . . . . . . oh.

Anyhow.

I lived next door to some of the more persistently annoying neighbours when I lived in London in my twenties. I shared a three bed roomed terraced house with two other splendid ladies on a quiet street in Battersea.

On both sides of our rented house the houses were converted into one bed flats, so we had two sets of neighbours on both sides, three lots of them were entertaining to say the least. Today I’ll concentrate on Ricky and Bianca. Not their real names.

Ricky and Bianca lived in one of the upstairs flats that flanked our house. Their living room bordered onto the main bedroom upstairs in our place. Ricky was a 40 plus year old black guy who thought he was a real gangsta – a real gangsta who drove a Lada and bought his trainers from ASDA that is.

Bianca wouldn’t say boo to a goose if you saw her in the street but when Ricky was resident in-between his many absences; she was a seriously forceful character. Reading between the lines, and not being able to avoid the eardrum ripping arguments that would occur, it seemed that Ricky was not the greatest boyfriend ever and to be honest he may not have even been her boyfriend, he could have been her deadbeat brother for all we knew.

Bianca seemingly had a regular job and possibly worked normal hours etc.

Ricky had a duvet in the back seat of his Lada.

There are two incidents that I can remember reasonably well. One was on one of the few visits my mum made to London.

I love my mum, but it was always interesting when she visited Fancy London. Bravely refusing to bow down to London peer pressure on the Tube by avoiding eye contact with complete strangers lest they be a serial killer or a religious maniac like any seasoned London traveller would, my mum’s right in there with full eye contact and a big smile and questions like “What’s that smell?” and “Why are there no bins at Kings Cross?” (The answer in case you’re wondering is that there are no bins in London so the IRA and latterly Al Qaeda can’t put bombs in them. Reassuring isn’t it.)

Anyway back to Ricky and Bianca. My Mum arrived in Battersea and we settled down for some tea, a natter and some lovely booze but as Ricky made one of his sporadic and unwelcome visits to next door and the fun started. We had to endure a hellish night of thumping music, screaming, shouting and the usual bangs and crashes that went on until the early hours, however we did eventually get to sleep.

The next morning we got up; wrung out from lack of sleep and nerves jangling I went to open the front door to find the most bizarre scene outside the house. The first thing to greet my weary eyes was a pair of (ugly) platform boots tossed haphazardly on our doorstep. As I ventured a little further into the street I saw that Bianca had been a busy girl during the night’s festivities.

Strewn across the road and draped over hedges and front yard walls were just about all of Ricky’s possessions. These included CDs, clothes (George at ASDA no doubt), foot wear and I’m pretty sure a telly – all topped off by a bleary eyed Ricky peering sheepishly from under a duvet on the back seat of his Lada.

I didn’t need my mum to see that first thing so I resignedly shut the door on the apocalyptic scene outside and went back to get the kettle on. Tea makes everything better.

By the time mum and I had caffeined up and set off on whatever cultural/retail activity we had planned for that day the street had been mostly cleared, not by a shamefaced Ricky I hasten to add, but by some kids with a shopping trolley. I like a young entrepreneur, and we had a number of them in Battersea.

The second memorable incident was another extraordinary public display of discord. I have no idea what led to the surreal tableau that was witnessed by residents and guests of our happy little home that evening, but it was glorious.

After hearing yet another Ricky and Bianca row spilling out into the street we peered out to see Bianca enthusiastically attacking Ricky’s beloved Lada with a large (and possibly rusty) hand saw and Ricky in turn defending his battered yet treasured car by tentatively hooking a golf club over Bianca’s saw every time she started in on the Lada’s bonnet, or he could have been aiming for her head.

I can’t remember how it resolved itself, I have a vague memory that she was screaming for help and we obliged by calling the police who trooped down and intervened.  Then we went back to whatever we were doing; waiting for the next enthralling episode to unfurl no doubt.

It sounds like we didn’t care but to be honest when it’s a regular occurrence you begin to lose any sense of moral outrage about domestic abuse and just start inwardly screaming “Leave him! Stop letting him in! Let me get some sleep!”

I look back on these incidents with sort of hazy fondness and a sense of detachment now, but at the time it was desperate. As I write this I can remember the diaries I kept for the Peabody Trust (the Housing Association that managed the bordering flats) and the disappointment I felt when their intervention turned out to be about as effective Nick Clegg/Viagra for pandas/a chocolate teapot.

Another testament to the dreadful impact noisy neighbours can have. Well at least I’ve got a few funny anecdotes out of it, lucky me eh?